Mekhet
Mekhet ''Those you don't see.'' ''"I know you can't hear me, but this is how you're going to die."'' That shit-eating grin. The shit-heel prick. How’d he get into your game? “Not playing the cards; I’m playing you,” he croons. He’s not wearing shades, but you can’t see his eyes. Chuckle. “Always wearing shade,” he says. Did you talk out loud? The fucker is playing the cards, because you just did a bottom deal, a triple lift, and two moves that ain’t got names. You know his hand. He’s already lost. Bastard’s not even looking at his cards. He knows. He doesn’t say, “Fold.” Says something else. Says your secret. The thing no one else knows. The thing you sit up at night praying no one ever finds out. The table flips. Loud noises. Your poker buddies beat you bloody. Through it all, you see his grin. He just fades away, and the last thing floating in the tobacco smoke is that grin. Something dead approaches. In its hollowed-out insides, there is an event horizon that swallows light, sound, and all knowing. Why do we find missing items, where we already looked, only after we’ve accused our loved ones? Is there a silhouette on the other side of the shower curtain? We can’t leap out of the shower at every imagined sight. What hides behind that acceptance? Ignore the writing on the fogged mirror. Why are we running, in the streets, from a feeling? This is silly. Cold hands pull us down. We scream. No one helps. They just walk by. What in the Twilight Zone fuck is going on? The Mekhet are often quiet, often invisible, and yet they see everything. Spies and prophets, they go where they will and learn what they want to. No secret is safe from the Mekhet. “We are the Y incision cut into this dark, dark world,” whispers a voice. “Shall we loosen our stitches?” They are the Shadows. It is difficult to know where they are standing right now and harder still to know where they’ve been. Decaying pages and sandstone glyphs nervously mutter hints. Stories echo down, out of ancient Egypt, of secret cults and walking cadavers with dissected souls. The Cherokee named the silence ka’lanu ahkyeli’ski, the Raven Mockers, who cut out the hearts of the sick and devoured their remaining years, unseen even as the victim’s fellows sat in the same room. In Eastern Europe, men called dhampir claimed to be half-vampire, traveling from village to village hunting the hungry dead. They gazed through their coat sleeves, like a telescope, then wrestled fiends only they could see. Some called them con artists. Time passes, first in sighs and then in riddles. The Shadows remain. They flock to mysteries and murk like anti-moths. In the age of information, the Mekhet curse creeps along whole new vectors. See the magician. There is no schedule. There is no advance notice. His only audience are those who respond to the flyers that enigmatically litter the streets on particular nights. “Tonight!” they say. “Do not fail to see,” they say. His audience stumbles up the steps to the black box theatre. Oh, the wonders he shows them when the doors lock. See the bookshop clerk. She sits the graveyard shift at the all night adult book store. The lost 3 A.M. souls come to her, off the freeway. She answers their questions with an encyclopedic knowledge of every book, magazine, and DVD in stock. She offers sage advice on sex toys. Say the right combination of syllables, and she will open the secret room, where much rarer books repose. See the P.I. Perhaps the greatest investigative mind of our time. But you will never meet him or her. The investigator operates outside of the view or knowledge of the client. Instead, you deal through the secretary. She speaks quite fondly of her employer, and her breath reeks of syrupy copper. See the disquieting silence. No. You don’t. It devoured its own name. It devoured its own echoes. Not even the Kindred remember. It only exists as a series of negative definitions. Let the other clans tromp through their Requiems like drunk elephants. The Mekhet will…well, no one will know exactly what it is they’re doing. What was that? It was only in your head. Yes. They are inside your head. Why you want to be us Go anywhere, see anything, know it all. Some people fear the shadows, but you are the Shadow. Cloak yourself in secrets and intrigue…or just watch. You like to watch. Why you should fear us The Mekhet are watching you sleep. No, really, they are. They find your breathing quite beautiful, and the way you turn over to the other side when some fierce dream grips you. One might live in your house, an unseen roommate. Wonder why you’re tired in the morning? Midnight snack. Wonder how your wife found out about the girl from Kinko’s? The Mekhet dropped a little hint. Why we should fear ourselves We know ourselves by the way that others know us. The Mekhet become something less by hiding. Our identity loses all context. And what about knowing everyone’s secrets? That means knowing some very bad things. It can be distinctly unpleasant to see what people are like beneath their masks; and for the Mekhet, there are no masks. More than any other clan, the Mekhet know there are things weirder than vampires out there. Ignorance was bliss. Clan Origins • The witch-king Akhenaten gave the high priest’s daughter to a crawling thing from outside day or night. It ate her heart and hollowed her soul, and the witch-king married the thing that coiled in that hollow. With an army of hollow soldiers, Akhenaten tore down the old gods. The Cult of the Phoenix fell. But the Cult of Set was cunning. Their priests removed their Ka so that no demon could eat it. The Sethites rose after death and defeated Akhenaten, but did not understand the price of their actions. • They had gone further than all before, seen all wonders. The eighth and ninth seas. The islands that moved in the night. The waterfall that flowed up. The explorers sailed into the land of the dead. There was no direction, no sun or stars, and torches would not light in the damp gloom. They illumined the way with reeking bundles of the blind fish that glowed as cold as gelid fire in the dead water. They asked the underworld shades for directions, but the dead do not speak without blood offerings, and even then, their tongues meander. First went the livestock. Then the sailors bled. A cup a question. Eventually, they returned to the land of the living, but not all the way. They had left every drop of blood in the underworld. They had to replenish, had to answer a longing that yawned wider than perdition. They had learned such secrets while asking the babbling shades for the way home. • Once upon a midnight darkly, a witch did a very bad thing. Envy and pride had taken ill weed in her heart, growing every day till her breast was a rootbound garden of thorns. Her magic mirror devoured her reflection. And still her scattered progeny slink about in the gloom, obsessed with secrets and divinations, but fearful of the hunger of mirrors. They search as those who have lost something, but forgot what — silently ever after. How to Make a Monster The Mekhet see and are yet unseen. This is endemic to their Vitae. A Shadow often has at least a few dots of the Stealth Skill. Even a cement-footed klutz in life finds that, after the Mekhet Embrace, people say things to him like, “Oh! I didn’t see you there.” Likewise, Occult and Investigation are common skills, as Mekhet tend to obsess over uncovering secrets. Larceny can prove useful too, as sometimes there are doors and locks between a clever Shadow and those delicious secrets. Mental Attributes and Skills are rarely tertiary. Anyone can be Embraced by a Mekhet, but those newly dead minds find themselves hungry for mental stimulation and consumed by curiosity. Shadows compulsively gravitate to certain manias and expressions of an inner darkness. These obsessions might manifest as an interest in the occult, academia, puzzle solving, prophecy, weird art, poetry, symbolism, or other esoterica. A Shadow who wishes to hide in plain sight with Obfuscate will benefit from Wits and Larceny. A young Mekhet who wants to use Auspex to sniff out his enemies’ secrets will want Wits, Intelligence, and Empathy. The clan’s love of cyphers often makes its members talented users of the Cacophony, and they often have ratings in the Cacophony Savvy Merit. More than one Mekhet has found herself the center of an enigmatic cult (and should take the appropriate Herd and Retainers Merits). Appearance varies from Shadow to Shadow. Some dress very professionally. Others play it more obvious, wearing lots of black. Others subconsciously dress more and more unremarkably, until they are hard to notice even when not employing supernatural stealth. Some Mekhet dress extremely eccentrically, a silent dare for the bovine-eyed mortals to see them. A weary vampire might let her appearance go, not bothering with grooming or changing clothes for a world to which she is invisible. Some Mekhet do not even bother wearing clothes anymore. As a Mekhet suffers further disassociation from his identity, he may go through rapid and drastic changes in personal appearance, or even take on the likeness of his last victim. Nickname: Shadows Stereotypes • Daeva: Suffering unnatural lust towards a Serpent? Just look into her soul. Clears that right up. • Gangrel: The Man and the Beast are having an amiable picnic in that Savage’s head. It’s rather disturbing. • Nosferatu: You look how the Daeva feel. • Ventrue: Those with the most schemes are always the most nervous when we walk into a room. Clan Bane (The Tenebrous Curse): Whispering shades and forgotten lore lurk in your blood. Secrets and information distill down to a weird substance in your Vitae. Attuned to the otherworldly, vampire banes express themselves more quickly in you. Sunlight, fire, and the long slumber of torpor pull at your dead body with a stronger tide. When the Mekhet reaches Humanity 6, choose a bane (see p. 108 for banes). As well, consider a Mekhet’s Humanity to be one dot lower for all Humanity-based banes (including sunlight and torpor). Favored Attributes Intelligence or Wits Disciplines [http://city-of-the-damned.wikia.com/wiki/Disciplines#Auspex Auspex], [http://city-of-the-damned.wikia.com/wiki/Disciplines#Celerity Celerity], [http://city-of-the-damned.wikia.com/wiki/Disciplines#Obfuscate Obfuscate] In the Covenants The Carthian Movement: The Movement is all about the signal. Often, visibility is preferred to stealth. But when the fighting gets dirty, the Revolution needs Shadows. Reporters and spies, the Mekhet are the ones to unlock all of the establishment’s hidden closets and become intimate with every skeleton within. They get the juicy details to broadcast over the Cacophony. They are the whistleblowers piping at decibels only their fellow Beasts can hear. Who better to go muckraking in this weird world? The Circle of the Crone: The Mekhet cannot help but seek out occulted secrets. Some are willing to dive into the pitch dark of the Crone’s maw in order to seize those secrets. The Mother’s Army, in turn, finds use for the Shadows. Their inquisitive minds take to blood sorcery with a frightening alacrity. The feverish beat of the Crone’s drums can quicken even the icy passions of a Shadow. Some Mekhet can even leave their bodies and take to the spiritual plane during rituals. Isn’t magic more fun when you’re dead? The Invictus: Who better to enforce the Conspiracy of Silence? Mekhet make fine spymasters for the First Estate. The only downside is that they are too good at this function, making covenant members of other clans nervous. Shadows often serve as agents and advisors, but some rise quite high. How terrifying is the prince who might know your every transgression at a glance? A Shadow prince might walk amongst his Kindred, wearing their faces. When a Firebrand baits you by asking your opinion of your liege…how can you be sure? The Lancea et Sanctum: Some Mekhet come for the magic, and find religious zeal afterwards. The Sanctified are happy to induct a Shadow, as she can touch a relic and fathom its deepest secrets. Who knows what sins lurk in the minds of mortals? Who better to give the Lord’s Judgment? Who else has the all-seeing eyes of God? The Ordo Dracul: Simply put, the Order needs the Mekhet. It is the Shadows who can best sniff out dragon nests, and it is the Shadows most likely to determine the nature and use of those nests. Their supernatural senses are invaluable in the Order’s experiments. The Mekhet can more directly see what other members of the covenant grope for in the dark with countless rounds of trial and error (mostly error). With the Shadows’ natural obsession for riddle-solving, symbol-deciphering, and delving into mysteries best left alone, the Order hardly needs to give them orders. It merely has to let the Mekhet be. Common Bloodlines [[Alucinor]], [[Khaibit]] [http://city-of-the-damned.wikia.com/wiki/Mekhet_Kindred Known Mekhet] =